The memory ended and Harry found himself once more in front of Professor Dumbledore's pensieve in the headmaster's desperately gripped the edges of the large stone bowl to keep himself upright as an enormous sense of tiredness and weakness flowed through him after what he just heard.

It had been a very long couple of days, preceded by a long and tiring year on the run from Voldemort. And after having watched the memory that Professor Snape left for him just before dying, Harry had a hard time feeling the strength to carry on.

'I have to die…' Harry thought as everything he thought he knew was swept out from under his feet.

'In order to finally defeat Voldemort, I have to die…' Harry looked around the office that had strangely not changed at all since Professor Snape took over Hogwarts, but he wasn't really seeing anything around him. He was hoping to find some last minute inspiration or suddenly relevant knowledge that would change what he now knew for a fact.

'I have to die, and Professor Dumbledore knew about it for years, maybe even as far back as when he put me with the Dursleys. I have to die so that Voldemort can be defeated…'

There was no last minute brilliantly appearing plan from Professor Dumbledore that would save the day. It wasn't like in the Chamber of Secrets when Fawkes appeared and saved him and gave him a fighting chance against the basilisk.

He really was at the end of his life. After all the deaths, the fighting, the hatred, the struggling to win…it didn't matter for him, in the end. He would never get to live out his life in an attempt to be "just Harry", and not the Boy-Who-Lived. He had to sacrifice himself so that everyone else could live.

A flash of color along the wall caught his attention, and Harry stared mindlessly at the portrait of Professor Dumbledore snoozing in his picture frame. He was wearing a bright blue robe with stars, moons, and comets adorning it.

A frown appeared on Harry's face as his brain kick-started again. Why was that blue color so important to him? Getting up from the ground where he had collapsed, Harry paced back and forth, furiously trying to place why the color blue was so important to him right then.

Harry's eyes fell on the pensieve once more and something clicked in his mind. A detail so minor that he completely ignored it before. Moving forward, he touched the swirling cloudy white liquid inside and fell into the memory again.

It was a strangely jumpy set of memories, now that he was viewing it for a second time. When Harry had viewed these memories earlier, he had ignored how choppy they were, and how they jumped from one memory to another, so desperate was he to glean some amount of information from it to win this war. He had assumed that it was due to how close Prof…

'Why am I calling him Professor in my mind?' Harry wondered as he continued to watch.

The memory that Snape provided jumped from watching Snape and Prof….Dumbledore talking, to watching Snape climbing some stairs.

"James Potter…Lazy. Arrogant." Snape's hateful voice echoed in the memory, unconnected to what Harry was seeing.

"My father was a great man!" Harry heard his own voice, defending his father.

"Your father was a swine!"

Snape's memory had changed to showing that day back in fifth year during Occlumency lessons when he had seen Snape's memory of being bullied by James Potter. Harry watched as the memory Snape pushed the memory of himself across the room forcefully.

Seeing it from the outside once more Harry frowned as he watched the little bitty him, from before he got his growth spurt during the last year, acting very defensive. He remembered that day, the day he realized how his father wasn't perfect and had been a bully. Harry hated bullies thanks to Dudley, and finding out that his father was one had been devastating to him.

He didn't like to be reminded of that day at all, but Harry's head tilted to the side in confusion as he stared at Snape's face. There was a glint of amusement there, totally at odds with how angry he had acted when he caught Harry looking at the memory.

'Now that I think about it, this scene feels an awful lot like all the times Malfoy employed his acting skills to get me in trouble,' Harry thought as his teeth clenched. The idea that Snape had deliberately shown him that aspect of his father in order to make him think lesser of his father had not occurred to him until now.

The scene of the memories shifted again, back to the headmaster's office as Snape inspected Dumbledore's cursed hand. The curse that eventually led to Dumbledore's death. A mercy killing at the hands of Snape, on the orders of Dumbledore himself.

"Don't ignore me, Severus." Snape stopped stalking out the room and turned halfway back to Dumbledore. "We both know Lord Voldemort has ordered the Malfoy boy to murder me."

There was a flicker of another memory while the voices of Dumbledore and Snape continued talking. Harry watched as Snape pushed a younger version of him up against the wall, shortly after he had cursed Malfoy with the Sectumsempra curse.

"And should he fail, one should presume that the Dark Lord will turn to you." Dumbledore said, and Harry was once more in the Headmaster's office, watching the meeting between Dumbledore and Snape.

"You must be the one to kill me, Severus," Dumbledore pleaded with Snape. "It is the only way."

The memory jumped to the end of sixth year, when Harry had seen Snape on the clock tower, just before he killed Dumbledore.

"Only then will the Dark Lord trust you completely," Dumbledore's voice echoed in the memory as Snape held his finger up in a shushing motion before climbing the stairs to where Dumbledore stood.

The memory Harry hid in the shadows after pulling his invisibility cloak over himself when he heard more footsteps coming up the tower. The other death eaters that Malfoy let into Hogwarts came up, and memory Harry did nothing because Dumbledore had always said he trusted Snape, so Harry did too.

Harry clenched his teeth and his hands tightly as he re-watched the memory of Snape killing Dumbledore.

"There will come a time, when Harry Potter must be told something. But you must wait until Voldemort is at his most vulnerable," Dumbledore said.

Harry was back in the headmaster's office, watching as the two men stood opposite each other. Sparing a moment to look around, instead of focusing on the two men, Harry noticed the outlines of the office looked…wobbly.

"Must be told what?" Snape asked, fully facing Dumbledore now.

The scene changed again, and Harry watched as Snape stepped over his father's body lying in the hallway outside his room as a baby in the house in Godric's Hallow.

Harry frowned at seeing that scene. He looked down at his father's dead body that looked…odd. He looked up at Snape's back as he moved into the room where Voldemort killed his mother and failed to kill him.

"On the night that Voldemort went to Godric's Hollow to kill Harry, Lily Potter cast herself between them. The curse rebounded."

Harry watched as Snape picked his way through the rubble. There was a lamp fallen to the ground, an unbroken bulb shining and lighting the hallway.

The memory jumped back to the Headmaster's office, and Harry was staring back and forth between the two men. His brows were scrunched up as he attempted to soak up every detail he could see.

"When that happened, a part of Voldemort's soul latched itself onto the only living thing it could find," Dumbledore said as he leaned against the wall while walking forward, looking incredibly weak.

The memory shifted once more back to the baby room that Harry had as a toddler at Godric's Hollow.

"Harry himself," Dumbledore voice concluded, floating in the air unconnected to the memory he was currently standing in.

Harry looked at the baby version of him in a crib, crying with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead. He looked down at his mother in a blue jumper, lying there dead.

"There's a reason Harry can speak with snakes," Dumbledore's voice echoed in the memory as Snape entered the room. "There's a reason he can look into Lord Voldemort's mind."

Harry blinked at the abrupt shift back to the headmaster's office. Dumbledore looked…desperate. "A part of Voldemort, lives inside him."

Looking at Snape's face, Harry frowned as it looked unfamiliar to him. There was an almost human expression on his face. One of concern and caring. Harry reminded himself that Snape was a spy for Voldemort and was no doubt an accomplished actor.

"So, when the time comes…the boy must die?" Snape asked.

"Yes," Dumbledore agreed, looking completely saddened and worn down. "Yes, he must die."

Even though he had heard it before, Harry still flinched at that pronouncement coming from Dumbledore's mouth. But he didn't get a chance to dwell too much as the memory shifted once more to the house in Godric's Hollow.

Harry watched as Snape collapsed in tears over his mother's body, clutching her to him as he cried her name. His eyes narrowed as he noticed something that he hadn't before. The memory of Snape that found his mother's body was much older looking than his mother.

"You've kept him alive so he can die at the proper moment," Snape said from back in the Headmaster's office. "You've been raising him like a pig for slaughter."

"Don't tell me now that you've grown to care for the boy," Dumbledore said.

Snape stared at the Headmaster for a long and silent moment, before he cast the Patronus. A silvery doe appeared, prancing around the room, before fading away.

That had been a shock to Harry the first time, seeing that Doe. It was the same one that led him to the Gryffindor sword in the lake.

But now, seeing it again, Harry wondered just why Snape set it up that particular way for him to find the sword? Why even put the sword in the lake? Snape could have just as well set it on a tree stump for him to find, instead of sticking it into a lake under anti-summoning charms.

"Lily," Dumbledore said Harry's mother's name, staring at Snape after the Doe Patronus faded away.

The memory shifted away from the Headmaster's office, and Harry was staring at Snape, clutching his mother to him as he cried. In the room, a baby Harry in a light blue onesie cried as well.

"After all this time," Dumbledore said, staring at Snape across from him in the Headmaster's office.

"Always," Snape intoned.

The memory shifted to the Forest of Dean where memory Harry was sitting outside the tent. He watched as the memory of him watched the Doe Patronus approach, and Snape's voice sounded out, with no source.

"So when the time comes, the boy must die?"

"Yes," Dumbledore nodded his head in agreement while staring blankly at his shelves. They were once more back in the Headmaster's office. "He must die. Voldemort himself must do it," Dumbledore looked at Snape directly as he passed the information on. "It is essential."

Harry stood once more in the Headmaster's office, outside the memory, staring down at the pensieve.

Pulling out Malfoy's wand, Harry pulled the memory out of the pensieve and put it back in the vial that Hermione had given him, setting it down on the desk next to the pensieve. Closing his eyes, he held the wand up to his temple as he concentrated on something he really didn't want to think on.

Pushing all his will, Harry pulled his wand away from his head and a glowing white memory strand came out of his temple. Putting the memory strand in the pensieve, Harry took a deep breath to steady himself.

Putting a finger into the memory, Harry was drawn inside the memory.

Looking around himself, Harry saw his parent's house in Godric's Hollow. It was bright and cheery, before Voldemort paid a visit. Harry smiled as he saw his parents, looking so young and barely older than he was now, playing with him as a toddler.

This was Harry's own memory of that night, the night that Voldemort came and killed his parents.

In a strange and twisted way, Harry almost felt grateful for the Dementors. Without their horrible aura and ability to pull up bad memories, he didn't think he would have been able to bring up this memory from when he was only 15 months old, of when his mother was killed right in front of him.

Looking at his own memory that he knew was not tampered with, Harry immediately began noticing differences between what Snape had shown him, and what he saw now. For one, his mother wasn't wearing a bright blue jumper, it was more a burgundy color.

His father and mother looked different from Snape's memory. They looked younger and, at the same time, more…real. Harry wasn't sure exactly what it was, but he knew they looked different from what he'd seen in Snape's memories.

And little Harry himself looked different from what Snape showed him; he was older than the version of him had been in Snape's memory. Harry smiled as he looked back and forth between the 15 month old him and his father. Even as a little sprout his dark black hair had that messy windswept look to it, refusing to be tamed.

With tears falling down his face, Harry watched the scene play out as the toddler version of him was encouraged by his parents to play a game of chase. They would roll a shiny gold snitch along the ground, and little memory Harry would chase after it on his two feet, grabbing it up in triumph, and carrying it back to his dad.

"You see that, Lily? He's a born quidditch player, for sure!" Harry's father bragged while holding up toddler Harry, who was still holding the snitch.

Harry felt something tight in his chest, and his nose felt sour. He blinked his eyes rapidly to keep the tears from obstructing his vision as he watched his mother roll her eyes and slap his dad on the back of the head.

"I don't care how much you brag about him, but you will not let him ride that broom until he's at least three…no, four years old," Harry's mother sternly ordered.

"But it's only a toy broom, Lily! It's got all kinds of protections on it! And the more he practices, the better he'll be when it's time for him to get on the Gryffindor team!" Harry's dad pouted at his mother, causing Harry to laugh out loud.

It was amazing to see his parents as they really were. Not the versions of them that Snape wanted him to see them as.

"No means no, James," Harry's mother said. "You can play catch all you want, to sharpen my precious little boy's reflexes. But he's not sitting on a broom for another three years. And that's final, unless you want to spend those same three years on the couch?"

"Fine." Harry's dad sulked for a moment, before cheering back up and going back to playing catch the snitch with baby Harry.

After a few minutes Harry's mother looked at the time and pronounced it bedtime for her little boy. She had just gotten to the top of the stairs with Harry in her arms, and Harry noticed that both the stairs and the first floor was far different from what Snape's memory showed,when Harry heard his father's desperate yell.

"He's here, Lily! Take Harry and run!"

Harry watched sadly as the memory version of his mother tried turning on the spot, but failed to Apparate. She tried the windows, and they were shut tight, no matter what spells she tried to break them down, it was useless.

Harry looked back towards the stairs as he heard the spell combat on the ground floor end with a loud thumping sound. He blinked his eyes and dashed his sleeve across his face to wipe away the tears that were flowing again.

He followed his memory self and his mother as she entered his room. Once more Harry was struck by the differences between Snape's memory and his own. His mother set him down in his bed and did something that caused invisible runes all through the room to flare to life with a glowing orange-red color. They faded back to invisibility as Harry noticed the heavy tread of steps sounding from beyond the door.

Harry frowned at the sound. From what he had seen in his own encounters with Voldemort, the snake-like man was very light on his feet, flowing along almost bonelessly as he dodged and weaved through spellfire. Was Voldemort deliberately increasing the sounds of his footsteps to instill fear into his mother?

Harry's jaw was clenched up tight, his teeth grinding, as he watched the door disintegrate and the dust fall to the ground. A short duel later, Harry could tell that his mother was exhausted from activating the runes, and Voldemort had disarmed his mother.

Voldemort gave his mother three chances to step aside and live while giving up her son. She rejected him, telling him to take her instead.

And so Voldemort killed Harry's mother, right in front of him, with a killing curse. But when he turned the killing curse on toddler Harry himself, it rebounded and destroyed his body.

The memory blinked to darkness then, for a few seconds. But it wasn't over yet; he hadn't exited the pensieve yet. Harry waited and watched to see what would happen after that moment.

The memory came back into focus when toddler Harry started bawling, suddenly awake. Harry had a glimpse of a younger, more human looking, Pettigrew holding two wands in his hands. Pettigrew was staring at the crying Harry with a strange look on his face. A large thumping sound came from downstairs then, and a frightened Pettigrew turned into his animagus form of a rat and scurried away.

Next the enormous form of Hagrid showed up and looked sadly down at Harry's mother, blew his nose on a large handkerchief while tears fell down his face, and then collected toddler Harry while attempting to croak words of comfort to settle down toddler Harry.

Harry followed Hagrid's enormous form as they walked back through the house. Harry looked sadly at the memory of his father's body lying in the living room, not up on the landing like Snape's memory had shown.

He watched as Sirius showed up on his motorcycle and tried to get Hagrid to give toddler Harry to him, but Hagrid refused, citing Dumbledore's orders. Sirius then gave his motorcycle to Hagrid to give him more reliable transport than the Knight Bus.

The memory ended and Harry was standing once more in the Headmaster's office, staring down at the pensieve. He felt a burning anger smoldering inside him. It was very obvious that he was being lied to.

"Snape for sure is lying," Harry muttered as he paced back and forth. Dumbledore himself told him back in sixth year that Slughorn had faked his memories. If Slughorn could do it, it was obvious that Snape could do it too.

"It's so obvious and typical of the foul git. He's always hated me and wanted me expelled…or dead, apparently." Harry clutched his hair in his hands in frustration. "But what is the truth? Am I really a Horcrux, or was that just Snape's attempt to kill me? And what do I do now?"

Harry paced back and forth in furious thought.

"Even if I am a Horcrux, it doesn't matter," Harry muttered while thinking about the ultimatum that Voldemort gave the defenders in the castle, to give him up to them. Voldemort's taunting of Harry with the idea that he was getting people killed pissed him off, instead of encouraging him to give himself up so that everyone else would live. "Not bloody likely the dark wanker would keep to the agreement and let them live after they opposed him. Even if he didn't kill them now, he would probably kill them one at a time later with things like the muggleborn extermination camps.

"So just giving myself up to be killed by Voldy like Snape wanted definitely isn't the way to go. But I've still got to kill that snake and then him as well. There's got to be a way to get them both. But even if I just get the snake and he kills me, at least he'll be mortal then. A vastly powerful and wickedly fast Dark Lord that everyone is afraid of fighting…But at least he'll be mortal, right?"

Harry frowned at that thought and continued pacing. In the middle of his pacing, Harry noticed the Sorting Hat still sitting on the shelf in its usual place. With nothing to lose, Harry put the hat on his head and requested the Sword of Gryffindor once more so he could kill Nagini.

A heavy metal object landed on his head with a thud, and Harry pulled the sword out of the hat with a scowl while rubbing his sore head.

With his invisibility cloak in one hand, and the sword in the other, Harry at least had the semblance of a plan. Hopefully he could pull it off. With a small smirk on his face, Harry couldn't help but think that this was the story of his life. An insane attempt at some half-arsed, last minute attempt to pull off a win. Not unlike his role as the seeker in quidditch, really…

"Catch the snitch or die trying indeed, Oliver…" Harry muttered as he exited the Headmaster's office, for perhaps the last time.

With a curse he dashed back in a moment later. With his stolen wand he fished up his own memory and put it back into his head. Then he glared at the vial that held Snape's made up memories. With some satisfaction, Harry vanished them. No one else would ever get to watch the lies that Snape tried to tell and get the insane idea that they had to kill him to stop Voldemort.

Just in case his crazy half-arsed plan worked and he somehow lived, he didn't want to leave that time bomb behind for anyone to find.

With his cloak in one hand, and the sword once more in his right hand, Harry exited the Headmaster's office, for perhaps the last time.

For real, this time.


Harry paused outside the great hall with his invisibility cloak covering him up. He couldn't chance running into anyone who would stop him from doing what he had to do. All the defenders were gathered there, talking strategy, mourning those who were killed in the earlier battle, and preparing for the next onslaught.

His eyes were dragged to the side where all the dead were laid out, and Harry felt his heart clench as he stared at all those people he knew and respected lying there. Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Colin Creevey, and Lavender Brown were just those he personally knew, but there were many others.

He stared for a long time at Hermione and Ron, standing with their arms around each other among Ron's family as they mourned Fred's death.

Harry shook his head and turned resolutely away. Wishing that the knowledge he had now about how to defeat and kill Voldemort was something he knew even a short year ago was useless. Even if he had a time turner, Hermione had said it was impossible to go back and change the past.

He had to focus on the here and now and finish this so no more people he cared about were killed.

Carefully choosing his footing so he didn't make noise, Harry made his way out the doors of Hogwarts, which were standing askew and wouldn't close without major repair work. Looking around, he spotted the light of torches just inside the edges of the Forbidden Forest.

Trudging by foot, Harry made his way to where he knew the death eaters and Voldemort were. He was just outside the tree-line when he heard the cruel mocking laughter of the death eaters.

Stepping even more carefully into the forest, Harry stared aghast at the scene in front of him. Sitting on a transfigured throne was Voldemort in front of his army of death eaters. In the middle of the death eaters was the bound form of Hagrid kneeling on the ground.

The death eaters were mocking and jeering him, casting curses at Hagrid that seemed to be quite painful, but not deadly. Harry had to clench his hand around Godric's Sword to remind himself why he was here. He wouldn't do anyone any good if he charged in there and wasted his surprise attack. He mentally apologized to Hagrid, but he couldn't immediately go help him.

Shifting his gaze back to Voldemort, he saw that Nagini was floating next to Voldemort in the glowing golden cage that kept her safe from spell fire. He briefly wondered if a killing curse could get right through the cage to kill the snake, but knew that even if he could cast the killing curse, which he probably could with how much anger and hate he currently had bubbling inside him, the incantation was too long and aiming was too chancy for a sure hit.

'Plan B it is, then,' Harry thought. It was a more dangerous plan, for sure, but it was leagues better than the one he had initially come up with after viewing Snape's lies the first time. After figuring out that Snape had lied to him, even at the very end of his life with his last breath, Harry certainly wasn't going to just walk up and dare Voldemort to kill him with a killing curse just to get rid of the supposed Horcrux in his head, if there even was one in his head.

Harry gritted his teeth and ignored the taunting of the death eaters and Hagrid's pained cries. He would only have one chance at this. He carefully walked around the group, approaching Voldemort from the side and behind.

Every bit of his nerves were jangling, and Harry was struggling not to shake. Walking right up to Voldemort without alerting anyone to his presence was perhaps one of the hardest things he had ever done. Not because it was difficult in itself, but because he'd had a lot of time to calm down and think about every little thing that could go wrong.

He wasn't in the middle of battle, with adrenaline running through his veins and no time to think. In this slow and agonizing approach, Harry had more than enough time to think and imagine all the ways this could go wrong.

"It appears…" Voldemort's echoing through the clearing in the forest caused all his death eaters to stop tormenting Hagrid. Voldemort stood up, vanishing the throne he had been sitting on. "…that the famous Boy-Who-Lived is a coward after all. It is so disappointing when one's enemies don't live up to their reputations," Voldemort sneered with contempt.

Harry nearly rolled his eyes at the monster that he was steadily closing in on, step by step. The cowardly dark lord, that so feared death he split his own soul into half a dozen was going to label him a coward? The same dark lord that only attacked single families in the dead of night then ran away when the aurors showed up? Or only attacked muggles who can't defend themselves? That was the dark lord labeling him a coward?

Taking a deep breath and ignoring what Voldemort was saying, Harry psyched himself up. With one hand, he pulled off the cloak, even as the Sword of Gryffindor was moving. It was almost an anticlimax when the sword sheared right through Voldemort's neck before he even knew Harry was there.

Harry had a brief flashback to when he stabbed the sword up into the basilisk's skull back at the end of his second year. Just like now, the sword didn't feel like it met any resistance at all as it sliced right through bone and cartilage.

Voldemort half turned towards Harry, his head still sitting on his neck, a look of stunned disbelief on his snake-like visage. Then his body topped one way and his head the other, bouncing on the ground to stop at the feet of his followers.

Harry didn't waste any time and swung Gryffindor's sword at Nagini's cage. Just as the sword reached the cage, the spell sustained by Voldemort vanished and the sword sliced Nagini in half. The big snake writhed on the ground in agony as it died.

Shifting the sword to his left hand while fishing Malfoy's wand from his pocket, Harry warily stared at the death eaters who were looking very shocked. Both of Draco's parents immediately apparated out, and a few others did as well.

"Avada Kedavra!" But Bellatrix was made of crazier stuff and immediately threw a killing curse at Harry. He raised the sword in his left hand, intending to curse her as soon as he blocked the killing curse on the blade. The killing curse Bellatrix sent his way rebounded right back into her, but Harry didn't get a chance to cast any spells.

While he had been distracted with Bellatrix's killing curse, another death eater had flanked him. Harry never saw the killing curse that came from the side and hit him.

Harry's fading consciousness noticed with grim satisfaction that Bellatrix got a face full of her own green killing curse as well before he faded out.


Harry suddenly realized he was lying naked on a stone floor. Opening his eyes, he got up and looked around.

"King's Cross Station? What am I doing here? And why am I naked? I've never had the naked in class dream, even if this isn't a classroom. Sure wish I had clothes..." Harry trailed off as he realized he was suddenly dressed. "Huh. Cool, so it is a lucid dream."

Looking around the empty station where the edges were wreathed in fog, Harry wondered what else was going to happen in this dream. He sat down on a bench for a moment, wondering what he should do in his boring, empty dream.

A whimpering sound came from just underneath him and startled Harry to his feet. Stopping a few feet away from the bench he had been sitting on, he peered underneath it to see two deformed looking naked babies cringing and mewling on the stone ground.

Feeling a bout of sympathy for the two babies, Harry reached out to them, intending to wish for some blankets to wrap them up in.

"You can do nothing for them, Harry my boy." A familiar voice sounded from behind Harry, startling him to jumping to his feet and spinning around.

"Professor?" Harry mumbled warily, unsure about what to feel about the man. He knew that Snape's plan to make him commit suicide by Voldemort might not have been completely his own. He wouldn't be surprised if Dumbledore had set up a plan to lead him to sacrificing himself for the "Greater Good" so that Voldemort could be killed.

After all, didn't Dumbledore sacrifice himself and Snape to save Draco bloody Malfoy? That little shit had been spewing hate and bile since he was eleven, and yet he got more consideration than Harry or Sirius ever had from Dumbledore. He was thrown to the Dursleys and Sirius was chucked in Azkaban without a trial.

"Yes, Harry my boy?"

"Why did you say I couldn't do anything for those weird babies?" Harry asked.

"Because, they are not actual babies, my boy. They are mutilated pieces of Voldemort's soul. I'm afraid it would do no good to help them at this time."

Harry nodded at the explanation, but wished for the blanket he was going to earlier anyway. He crouched down and moved the two babies on to the blanket. They felt horrible under his hands, their skin not feeling like it was connected to the body underneath.

"Harry, my boy, I told you…"

"Oh, put a sock in it, you barmy old man! Like you know anything about compassion."

Harry startled as another familiar voice sounded from behind him. He knew he was already dead, though, so he didn't jump this time, having gotten somewhat used to startling things happening here, and just finished bundling up the deformed babies.

"Ah…Tom…"

"Don't call me that, goatfucker," Voldemort snarled back.

Harry sat down next to the deformed babies and decided to simply watch the back and forth between the two older men. He could understand why the Horcruxes and Voldemort were here with him, since they all died at the same time and were connected together. But what was Dumbledore doing here, over a year after his death? It was strange.

"Always so full of anger, it's no wonder you turned dark, Tom."

"As full of shit as ever, old man," Voldemort mocked. "It's always 'you're going dark' here and 'I'm the leader of the Light' there with you, isn't it? Especially when someone doesn't do what you say, they're labeled as 'dark'."

"But Tom, if you had just learned to let go of your anger…"

"Bullshit! My anger is what kept me alive all those years you sent me back to that damned orphanage in the middle of a world war when I begged you to let me stay at Hogwarts! You know how hard it was to find food when the Nazi were bombing London? And you tried to take away my right to use magic during the summer! It was the only thing that kept me alive!"

"Alas, Tom, you were using magic to coerce people and going dark. I had to try to save you from yourself. I sometimes blame myself, wondering if I only did more…" Dumbledore sadly shook his head.

"Spare us your fake compassion while patting yourself on the back over how superior you are! You wouldn't know compassion if it reared up and smacked you in the dick! Weren't you just telling the brat here that he shouldn't bother showing compassion to those two babies?"

Harry found himself a bit amused at the back and forth between these two dead men. Especially the crudeness of Voldemort. It was somehow refreshing in the face of Dumbledore's platitudes and constant urging to others to be kind to people who wanted to kill him.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Tom," Dumbledore said, and Harry noticed his teeth were slightly clenched in annoyance. "I'm the Leader of the Light, I'm always looking out for everyone's best interests."

"Oh, really? You know compassion? What about what you did to that brat-who-lived, huh? Sent him to magic hating muggles and all." Voldemort laughed nastily when he saw Dumbledore flinch. "Oh, didn't know I knew that? Of course Snape was my little bird and sang me an interesting tale of a poor abused orphan that he took great pleasure in tormenting."

"Of course Severus wouldn't do that! He reformed and greatly changed his life, thanks to my tireless efforts." Dumbledore immediately protested.

"Wrong! Snape was always a miserable cunt, and he liked to make others miserable too." Voldemort turned to Harry then. "Did you ever wonder why your father wore glasses? And why you needed them too, even after your mother had perfect vision?"

"Tom…" Dumbledore warned.

"Piss off, goatfucker!" Voldemort yelled loudly at Dumbledore with a loud laugh. Dumbledore just looked resigned since apparently he couldn't forcibly restrain Voldemort here in the afterlife. "We're already dead and you can't do anything, so you can't deny me the satisfaction of pissing in your little light-side cereal.

"So, yeah. Snape was an arse all his life. Learned it from his muggle father, I imagine. He liked to taunt and tease your old man when your mother wasn't looking, and then act all pitiful when she was so she would go rip up your old man for being a bully."

"Huh, so that's where Malfoy learned it from," Harry realized. "Snape was always there to punish me and my friends when Malfoy was taunting us."

Harry gave Dumbledore the stink-eye for allowing Snape to do that, but Dumbledore was looking off to the side as if he never heard anything. A sense of unreality gripped Harry for a bit. He never thought that there would be a time he would be chatting with Voldemort and Dumbledore and actually agree with Voldemort.

"So one of Snape's favorite brags…" Voldemort was interrupted Dumbledore.

"Harry, it's important that you learn to…" Dumbledore was turn interrupted by Voldemort as he talked over the headmaster.

"…was that he cursed James Potter and three generations of descendants to have bad eyesight. Snape was so furious about how popular your dad became because of his amazing quidditch skills, he decided to do something to ruin his professional quidditch aspirations. That's why he ended up being an auror, because he couldn't make the national team with how poor his eyesight had become. The teams won't take anyone that needs glasses, it's too dangerous in the sport, besides having enchanted items is prohibited."

Voldemort then turned and started cursing and mocking Dumbledore who was still stuck on getting Harry to forgive Snape. At which point Dumbledore couldn't resist arguing with Voldemort about how his unforgiving mentality is what drove him to the dark and ruined his life.

Harry looked back and forth at the two men, and then got up and walked away. They didn't even notice him leaving.

As Harry was walking to the entrance to King's Cross Station, he noticed more and more people showing up on the benches, waiting for a train. Bellatrix was there, and she cursed at him until he passed her by. Bellatrix's husband and brother in law were there as well, though they just gave him dirty looks.

He spotted a few of his friends that died, and sadly exchanged greetings and condolences about their untimely demise, though they tried to cheer him up, especially Fred. A joker to the end, that one, but it actually worked.

Eventually Harry stepped out of King's Cross and he woke up in his body in the Forbidden Forest. Big, kind, and bloody dangerous Hagrid was crying over him. Sitting up, Harry looked around, unnoticed by Hagrid.

There were quite a few dead bodies of death eaters lying around. Some of them looked to have been smashed by Hagrid with a tree truck in his anger.

But it looked like most of the death eaters ran away after Harry killed Voldemort.

"Harry…?"

"Hey, Hagrid. How are you doing?"

"Blimey, Harry! I don' know how you did it, but you're alive!" Hagrid fell to weeping and laughing at the same time while Harry got up and patted him on the shoulder.

"It's good to see you're alright, Hagrid." Harry looked towards the castle through the trees and saw that his friends and all the defenders of Hogwarts were gathering up in the courtyard, looking ready for a fight. "Well, I figure we ought to go tell everyone else that Voldemort is dead, Hagrid."

"I figure you're right, Harry. Always had a good head on your shoulders, just like yer mum." Hagrid got up and nodded down at Harry. His words also put a smile on his face.

"Thanks, Hagrid."

Harry looked around and spotted his invisibility cloak and grabbed it up, stuffing it in his pockets, before picking up the Sword of Gryffindor and walking toward the castle with Hagrid lumbering at his side.

Physically he ached from getting hit with another killing curse. And the sadness of the many deaths of his friends still lingered in his heart, even after they had reassured him it wasn't his fault they died.

But despite all that, he still felt a lot lighter than he had in a long time. Maybe it was the lack of Horcrux in his scar, maybe it was the knowledge that he was finally free of Voldemort and actually had a life he could live. Maybe it was all of the above, he wasn't sure.

But any way he sliced it, it was good to be alive. To have a future ahead of him that he could make as good as his abilities let him. Looking at the crowd that was waiting for him and Hagrid, he noticed Ron was staring gape-mouthed before he blurted something out. Harry couldn't hear what it was, but he noticed the anger that blossomed on Hermione's face as she turned and began berating him loudly.

He wasn't sure if those two could ever go a full day without fighting, and Harry couldn't help it, he laughed loudly at the sight. Even after the darkness of war, there were still some bits and pieces of normality and the light of hope shining through.